CMYK question

ok, I changed my setting in RSE to Adobe 1998 and created a 16 bit tiff. Changed my color mgmt in PSPX to Adobe 1998 and CMYK US Web Coated (SWOP). Opened the image in PSPX, saved as CMYK...same problem. Colors aren't even close.

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I will try to answer as much of this as I can - knowing that your next message, which I looked at briefly, may make this one academic.

Paraphrasing your procedure (only you will know if I am interpreting your statements correctly) -
You do raw processing and save it with sRGB embedded.

You do some undefined processing in RGB and eventually change mode to CMYK?? You don't really say what you do at that point. I have no idea what you mean when you say that your CMYK is the Kodak SWOP proofer.

As my last step I do a Mode change to CMYK Color - either you do an equivalent step or you don't. At the point where I do that Mode change, my default working space for CMYK is U.S. Web Coated (SWOP), so that causes that profile to be embedded.
So, my end result is a file with the CMYK , US Web Coated (SWOP) profile embedded in it.

At this point it matters not whether your RGB color space was sRGB or AdobeRGB or one of the others - what is important is that you made that conversion from RGB to CMYK in an environment in which a Color Management System was in control. Not being familiar with the programs you are using, that is an unknown for me.

Let's go on to your next message.

Changing from use of sRGB to use of Adobe RGB will have no bearing on the result.

When you say that you changed your color mgmt in PSPX to Adobe 1998 and CMYK US Web Coated (SWOP), that sounds vaguely familiar, but it's not the words I need to hear. Either you did an explicit step that CHANGED the embedded profile from RGB to CMYK or you didn't. That's the issue, as I see it. If such an operation were done under a Color Managed system, it should NOT have caused you to see any change in color on the screen.

I am now going to capture your last two posted images and see if I can see any EXIF data that would tell me what profiles are embedded therein.

I will get back to you as soon as I check on that.

I just checked those last two images.

Both images have file info that tells me they are both in RGB Color Mode. NEITHER ONE IS IN CMYK MODE. That tells me that you are not doing the conversion to CMYK. I don't really know what you are doing in your last step, but you are NOT converting to CMYK mode. You will have to look closer at what your program tells you to do to get into CMYK mode. Apparently you are doing some kind of proofing. I could go into proofing in PSCS, but I know nothing about how it's done in PSP. As you might imagine, the POTN tends to be Photoshop centric, as well as Canon centric. No reflection on PSP, I used the older PSP versions for years until I finally got Photoshopped - it's just that when I went for my novice training in Color Management, it was in PSCS - Hi!

P.S. - I keep wondering when the real Color Management Guru's will step in and explain what it is that you have to do in PSPX.
Edit:
BTW, when I do a soft proof in PSCS2, I "do" see a slight shift in two of those color bars (purple and blue get a little darker) - but it's not hardly enough to see in static images.

Workflow does have many issues.
But one weak link in the chain is that his monitor profile is set to sRGB.
The monitor needs to be calibrated and profiled, and set to that profile or at least a "generic" factory profile needs to be used.

It's about time you got here

I had no idea how to interpret the PSPX configuration.

What about the fact that he claims he converts to CMYK, but doesn't seem to actually do that, plus I now realize that he has an RGB printer profile that he might actually be converting to as his final output.

Robert_Lay wrote:
It's about time you got here

You were doing just fine! Didn't want to hijack.....

You are dead on about the CMYK conversion issue AND the non-color mamaged reality.

I have not used PSPX but from playing with the images, an assiging of a CMYK profile has to be going on.
Both have no profile assigned and thus none embedded.
Assignment of sRGB to the first image brings things into line fairly well on my monitor(expected because his "workflow" is based on sRGB). The same profile and just about any other assigned to the second, "bad color", image looks bad. Since under PSCS2 you can not assign a CMYK profile to an RGB image, I then assigned the smallest-gamut-profile I had, Noritsu for Gordon's photography in Reno, to the "good" image and colors when to hell-in-a-handbasket.

As to the flavor of profile, RGB vs. CMYK based, this should not make any diff. unless he is double-color-managing the print session, i.e. performing conversions with the print dialogue/driver in PSPX and in the printer software itself.
Allot of inkjet printer profiles these days are RGB based to leverage the extended gammuts offered by 6, 7 and 8 color inkjets without having to produce a n-color profile, where n is the number of colors/channels your printer has, that requires an EXPENSIVE RIP or to avoid having to use "secret sauce" to make the printers perform(which makes the profiles relatively invalid in the strict ICC sense).

I don't think the colour managed aspect is that significant unless you actually change the values of the pixels by editing. If you just import the pic and convert, it should be as good as it gets in those circumstances.

I didn't have a properly calibrated monitor when I changed monitors and it didn't really cause any problems. I only recently used profiles and again, that made very little difference.

So, back to my original point, if you actually convert the image to cmyk, you will get an impression of how it is likely to look (at least compared to the rgb version, you see).

All the colour management stuff comes into it's own if you actually want to control how the image appears.

Graham

Exactly!

But that is not what is happening in Crypto's reality.
An assignment of a profile is happening not a conversion.

And you are right, even in a non-color managed reality when you assign, convert and soft-proof centain changes will still be evident and thus you will have a "measurement device" of expected change. But you will not know what the metric is for the "measurement device". You won't have a base-line standard upon which to judge those changes against the outside world....
That is what color management is all about.

UncleDoug wrote:
Exactly!

But that is not what is happening in Crypto's reality.
An assignment of a profile is happening not a conversion.

And you are right, even in a non-color managed reality when you assign, convert and soft-proof centain changes will still be evident and thus you will have a "measurement device" of expected change. But you will not know what the metric is for the "measurement device". You won't have a base-line standard upon which to judge those changes against the outside world....
That is what color management is all about.

Yes, Bob managed to glean that he was not converting to cmyk. That was certainly Crypto's issue. The fact that he was reasonably happy with his rgb images, leads me to think that he was being mislead by only assigning a cmyk tag.

The minor point I was making is that converting to cmyk is not the ordeal it is portrayed, unless it is converting vivid colours (which will change significantly). It will probably print just fine.

Graham

Not that it will help too much with all the monitor settings, but . . . . .

You can sometimes download from the printer's website or have them email you their specific CMYK profile for their equipment.

Could not agree with you more!

Crypto,

IF you are sure you are converting to a CMYK space and have a choice of rendering intents, choose saturation for the intent. May save your reds.....

see comments in red
Thanks for all your help. This topics seems to cause some confusion due to my lack of knowledge.